Tyler Cowen's Blog, page 287
October 13, 2013
Assorted links
1. Flipping the classroom does seem to work.
2. The fifty scariest books of all time?
3. Colonel Chabert, but from Ohio.
4. G.K. Chesterton against self-help books.
5. What will driverless cars mean for cyclists? Might increasing speeds push them off the road?
The new Elizabeth Gilbert book and what makes for an ideal read on a long plane flight?
It’s good — really — and it is called The Signature of All Things. I also find the book was nearly ideal for a long plane flight. It has enough ideas to keep one’s interest, as I find that truly schlocky fiction bores me after a short while (it is better for short flights than for long ones). But it is also easy enough to read and the print is suitably large.
Which other books do you find to be ideal for long plane flights?
Facts about Catalonia
Nationalist leaders claim that an independent Catalonia would be like the Sweden, Netherlands, or Massachusetts of the south of Europe. Although Catalonia is a rich region, it is very far from these benchmark cases. According to an EU study, Catalonia has the worst regional government in Spain in terms of corruption, effectiveness and accountability, with a level comparable only to some regions in Greece, Italy and former Eastern Bloc countries.
Similar to the rest of Spain, the area is suffering from the consequences of economic crisis and political corruption scandals. Its regional government is the most indebted in the country in absolute terms and the third most indebted relative to its GDP. The Catalan government has seen its credit rating slashed by all credit agencies and is unable to finance itself in the markets. In addition to this, an independent Catalonia would automatically exit the EU and would have to renegotiate membership with the threat of a Spanish veto.
Here is more, by José Javier Olivas, via the excellent www.macrodigest.com.
October 12, 2013
The cost of losing when you try brinksmanship
From the essential Robert Costa on Twitter:
Some more info from Senate R convos: Sen Dems are pushing for Reid to include seq fixes in any deal, think GOP is on ropes, shld push
Petard, hoist, etc. “Seq fixes” by the way means fixes to the sequester, or in this case more government spending. If you play threat games and lose them, you don’t simply end up back to where you started, rather you become vulnerable to the threats of the other party. That is yet another reason why these threat games are dangerous.
Costa by the way is the guy to follow on this whole mess.
Gangnam fact of the day
I am here for a few days, so my attention turned to a new paper by Kim and Jung, entitled Investor PSY-chology, here is the abstract:
The global success of “Gangnam Style,” the 18th K-pop single by the South Korean rapper PSY in 2012, was an exogenous shock to international investor enthusiasm about DI Corp., because the company’s chairman and CEO is PSY’s father. The stock price of the semiconductor equipment company jumped by almost 800% in three months without material information. Using Korean microstructure data that identifies non-resident foreign individual (NRFInd, hereafter) investors and resident foreign individual (RFInd, hereafter) investors by nationality, we study international individual investor behavior. The count of flash mob videos and parody videos uploaded on YouTube from each country is our proxy for the enthusiasm of individual investors. We find that NRFInd (RFInd) investors in specific countries become net buyers (sellers) of DI Corp. when a flash mob or parody music video is uploaded in their country. This is because RFInd investors had already purchased the stock on the day PSY left Korea to meet Scooter Braun, the producer of Justin Bieber. Our results support a “resale option” explanation about the bubble in the asset price.
Hat tip goes to @EmanuelDerman.
Assorted links
1. The McDonalds tasting menu.
2. Purva paksha.
3. Some more on those new service sector jobs. “”I bet there are many more people who are unfaithful than are Jewish,” Biderman remembers thinking.” Washington D.C. is a clear number one for membership.
4. “Your vacuum might rent an attachment from the neighbor’s vacuum without telling you.”
5. Are anti-bullying programs actually “how to” courses?
Will the sports sector ever be disrupted?
Here is a question from a recent symposium:
People spend 4 hours per week watching sports and 40 listening to music. But the music industry is one sixth the size of the sports industry. Why?
No time-shifting for live contests, much less piracy, less substitutability (there is only one Super Bowl), and greater indivisibility of product would be the beginnings of an answer. The source is here, hat tip goes to Ted Gioia.
How the machines will pick the best workers in the future
From Aki Ito, here is a a good discussion of a new innovation, related to some trends I discussed in Average is Over:
To aid that search [for better workers], Juhl this month will begin using an online video game designed to track, record and analyze every millisecond of its players’ behavior. Developed by Knack in Palo Alto, California, Wasabi Waiter places job-seekers in the shoes of a sushi server who must identify the mood of his cartoon customers and bring them the dish labeled with the matching emotion. On a running clock, they must also clear empty dishes into the sink while tending to new customers who take a seat at the bar.
Using about a megabyte of data per candidate, Knack’s software measures a variety of attributes shown in academic studies to relate to job performance, including conscientiousness and the capacity to recognize others’ emotions. Knack’s clients will also see a score estimating each applicant’s likelihood of being a high performer.
As for another company:
…The patterns gleaned since the company’s founding in 2007 have debunked many of the common assumptions held by recruiters, Evolv executives say. For example, a history of job-hopping or long bouts of unemployment has little relationship with how long the candidate will stay at his or her next job, according to Evolv’s analysis of call center agents.
“As human beings, we’re actually pretty bad at evaluating other human beings,” said David Ostberg, vice president of workforce science at Evolv. “We’re making sure people are using the right data, instead of the traditional methods that were previously thought to be valid but big data’s showing are not.”
And:
New York-based ConnectCubed has also developed software to determine the personality and cognitive abilities of job applicants that, at its largest clients, is tailored for that specific company. ConnectCubed has existing workers at those businesses complete its video games and questionnaires so the behavioral profiles of the star employees serve as a benchmark for who managers should hire in the future.
“When new people apply, you can say, wow this guy has all the makings of our top salesmen,” said Michael Tanenbaum, chief executive officer and co-founder of the service. “These are things that are impossible to measure from a resume, especially with educational backgrounds that are often more determined by socioeconomic status than your innate ability.”
To be sure, Knack and ConnectCubed, which say they can predict high-performers across a broad set of workers, haven’t been around for long enough to track, over time, whether their technologies actually are improving the quality of the employees their clients hire or those businesses’ bottom line.
The article is interesting throughout.
October 11, 2013
Bob Laszlewski on the ACA exchanges
Based upon my survey of a large number of health plans accounting for substantial market share in the 36 states the federal insurance exchange is operating in, not more than about 5,000 individuals and families signed-up for health insurance in the 36 states run by the Obama administration through Monday.
It is not uncommon for a major health insurer with a large market share to report less than 100 enrollments in the first week.
Reports today say the enrollments continue to trickle in at about the same rate.
Worse, the backroom connection between the insurance companies and the federal government is a disaster. Things are worse behind the curtain than in front of it.
Here is one example from a carrier–and I have received numerous reports from many other carriers with exactly the same problem. One carrier exec told me that yesterday they got 7 transactions for 1 person – 4 enrollments and 3 cancellations.
For some reason the system is enrolling, unenrolling, enrolling again, and so forth the same person. This has been going on for a few days for many of the enrollments being sent to the health plans. It has got on to the point that the health plans worry some of these very few enrollments really don’t exist.
The reconciliation system, that reconciles enrollment between the feds and the health plans, is not working and hasn’t even been tested yet.
When health plans call the special health plan “help desk” they are lucky to get through. When they finally get through, the feds are creating a “help desk ticket” to be researched.
Now, if we are enrolling 20 to 50 people per day per health plan per state through the federal exchange, that might be sort of manageable. But if this thing ever ramps up to thousands of enrollments a day…
In summary, big market share health plans are getting maybe 50 enrollments per day per state from the feds and that little bit of new business is a mess.
The link is here, hat tip goes to virtually everyone in my Twitter feed.
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